The spiced air of India was the stuff of legend in Shakespeare’s England, and is brought to vivid life in this famous passage from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” These were images which Shakespeare knew his audiences would understand, during a period in which England had begun its sea voyages to Asia in earnest, and the fabulous possibilities of directly accessing the merchandise of India were being realized for the first time.
Austin Tichenor reflects on the tension the WandaVision series creates between character and genre, reminding him of Shakespeare’s plays.
Sweet potato pies, a beloved staple of North American fall and winter cooking, are baked out of mashed or blended sweet potatoes mixed with condensed milk, eggs, and spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, mace, and allspice. Few Americans and Canadians would think of such a dish as traditionally English, yet many cookery books written in England during the seventeenth century show that English people made and enjoyed pies like this. We decided to try one of these recipes, found in the Folger collection, during our recent Pi Day celebration.
Erin Blake tells the story of how there came to be two Puck sculptures at the Folger, after the original marble sculpture was damaged.
How did the Folger Shakespeare Library’s “Puck” sculpture by Brenda Putnam (1890–1975) come to be? There is a story to tell…..
Author Nicole Galland gives Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels for Queen Elizabeth I, his proper due. She writes: “Because of Tilney, playwrights became more revered among the reading classes; because of Tilney, only certain playwrights’ works were greatly revered; because of Tilney, Shakespeare was chief among those playwrights. That he remains chief among playwrights is a testament to his genius, of course. But the fact that he was positioned to be recognized as such is largely due to Edmund Tilney.”
